Native Filmmakers – Bitch Flicks

Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema

By forcing the subconscious fears of audiences to the surface, horror cinema evokes reactions psychologically and physically — that is its power. This power can serve and support uncensored Indigenous expression by allowing Indigenous filmmakers the opportunity to unleash dark, unsanitized allegorical representations of the abhorrent, repugnant, violent abomination that is colonization.

This guest post by Ariel Smith originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby employs aesthetic strategies and themes from horror cinema in order to push back against stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples and critique contemporary neo-colonial systems. Barnaby has been known to recall conventions from both body horror and dystopian science fiction in order to present dark, disturbing narratives in which Mi’gmaq characters navigate through gruesome representations of abjection and assimilation. In his first feature film, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), we see Barnaby drawing from another sub-genre of horror cinema, that of the rape revenge film.

Revenge tropes in the hands of Jeff Barnaby are used to not only tell the story of the female lead’s experiences of violation, but also to articulate a visceral, rage-filled revenge fantasy on behalf of a violated peoples.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is set against the backdrop of Canada’s Indian Residential School System.

For those who don’t know, from 1884 to 1948, it was compulsory for Indigenous children under 16 years of age living in what is now known as Canada to attend colonial government-funded, church-run day and boarding schools. Children were forcibly removed from their families by Indian agents, and families were threatened with fines or prison if they failed to send their children. Children as young as 5 could be kept away from their parents for months or years at a time, were prohibited from speaking their language, and were issued severe corporal punishment for any expression of non-Christian cultural, social or spiritual practice. The Indian Residential School System’s express and specific, methodical intention was to “Kill the Indian in the child“ and resulted in cultural genocide that Indigenous nations are only now beginning to heal from. Many children experienced heinous sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, as well as being subjected to publicly documented sterilization efforts and starvation experiments. The last residential school closed in Canada in 1996 and this colonial system has resulted in multiple, consecutive generations with both stolen childhoods and parenthoods. Even Indigenous children who did not attend residential school are affected by inter-generational trauma, as their parents and/or grandparents most likely attended.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls takes place on a Mi’gma reserve in the late 1970s. The lead protagonist, 15-year-old Alia, makes her living dealing pot. One of her most pressing expenses is paying off the corrupt and evil Indian agent, Popper, in order for herself, and other kids from her community to not be taken away to the residential school, where they will undoubtedly be physically and sexually abused. Alia winds up being double crossed and taken against her will to the school, but she soon breaks out and on Halloween night, together with a posse of other kids from the rez, enacts violent, bloody, revenge against the school’s abusive staff.

For me, the violence and graphic nature found in Barnaby’s work is fitting and appropriate due to the themes he engages. Barnaby’s films trigger visceral responses by exposing the audience to poetic and raw depictions of colonial violence against Indigenous bodies. As Indigenous people, we understand genocide and trauma; we understand horror, we live it. Barnaby’s films frame a space where non-Indigenous people must look at the screen and feel repulsed, afraid, and unsafe by facing the terrifying and grotesquely violent truth and reality that is colonial nation building.

The sub-genre of rape revenge is often categorized under an umbrella of exploitation cinema, famous for its use of shock value and extreme scenarios. However, Indigenous filmmakers’ contributions to the rape revenge canon do not require exaggeration. We do not need to think up imagined incidents of vicious macabre torture. The Marquis de Sade has nothing on Canada’s residential schools. The horror, the terror — it’s all around us, it is the foundation that the colonial states are built upon. We walk in it every day, and prove our resilience through continued survival.

Another example of rape revenge themes within Indigenous cinema can be found in Niitsítapi/Sami filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers‘ short film, A Red Girl’s Reasoning.

Tailfeathers presents us with a narrative in which an Indigenous woman, who is raped, is failed by the justice system and becomes a vigilante, seeking and delivering violent revenge against her own and other women’s rapists.

“According to Statistics Canada the national homicide rate for Indigenous women is at least seven times higher than for non-Indigenous women… There are also a greatly disproportionate number of Indigenous women and girls among long-term missing persons cases. In Saskatchewan, Indigenous women make up only 6 per cent of the population of the province, but 60 per cent of its missing women are Indigenous.”

Media coverage and police support is often far less for missing or murdered Indigenous women than in the case of a white woman. Rape and sexual assault have been used as a tool of colonial conquest since contact and the epidemic of stolen sisters is a reflection of how Indigenous women continue to be devalued and dehumanized by white settler society.

The vengeance scenarios portrayed in both Rhymes for Young Ghouls and A Red Girl’s Reasoning resonate deeply with Indigenous audiences as they tap into our collective pain and anger. These films serve to disrupt the dominant visual culture, which excludes Indigenous perspectives and representation and has all but erased Indigenous peoples from the imagination of settler consciousness. Indigenous filmmakers provide visual allegory for what feminist and author bell hooks has called the “killing rage,” which is described as, “The fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism… and the finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength, and a catalyst for productive change.”

Approaching and calling attention to the full depth of monstrosity that is colonial transgression is what makes Indigenous cinema, in general, such a powerful tool of resistance and resurgence. Indigenous cinema is bigger than the individual movies we make. Regardless of content or form, Native filmmakers have not yet been afforded the luxury to create work that is not automatically placed under a socio-political lens. As Indigenous peoples living in post-colonial/neo-colonial times, our presence — our very existence — is in itself a political statement, and our artistic expression is in itself a beautiful declaration of sovereignty, and self-determination.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Courage and Consequences in Rhymes for Young Ghouls

Ariel Smith (Nêhiyaw/Jewish) is a filmmaker, video artist, writer and cultural worker currently based on unceded Algonquin territory, also known as Ottawa, Ontario. She has shown at festivals and galleries internationally including: Images (Toronto), Mix Experimental Film Festival (NYC), Urban Shaman (Winnipeg), MAI (Montreal), Gallery Sans Nom (Moncton), and Cold Creation Gallery (Barcelona, Spain). Her film Saviour Complex (2008) was nominated for Best Experimental at the 2008 Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. Ariel’s video Swallow (2002) was the winner of the Cynthia Licker Sage Award at the 2004 imagineNative Film Festival, and Jury Third prize at the 2003 Media City Festival of Experimental Film and Video. Ariel’s writing and has been published by The Ottawa Art Gallery, The Ottawa International Animation Festival, imagineNative Festival of Indigenous Film and Media Art, and Kimiwan Magazine.

Ariel also works in Indigenous media arts advocacy and administration and is currently the director of National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC).

‘Blackstone’: Stoney Women And The Many Meanings of Sovereignty

The most remarkable feature of Ron E. Scott’s Canadian drama ‘Blackstone,’ apart from its blistering probing of Kellogg’s “ugly facts” of demoralization, is how closely it links gendered oppressions with other exploitations.

(No spoilers in the comments past Season Two please, deprived Irish viewer here.)

“It is a cause of astonishment to us that you white women are only now, in this twentieth century, claiming what has been the Indian woman’s privilege as far back as history traces.” – Laura Kellogg

The writings of pioneering suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton reveal that the political status of Iroquoian (Haudenosaunee) women inspired her vision of gender equality. The early 20th century Oneida political activist, Laura Cornelius Kellogg, also highlighted Benjamin Franklin’s acknowledged debt to the Five Nations’ (Iroquois) Great Law in inspiring distinctive features of American democracy. Kellogg: “have you not pauperized and debauched a whole people who were not only the richest in possessions, but whose native character has inspired those of your arts and literature which contain national distinction?”

As we in Europe benefited from peace-building through federal government, and from female emancipation, those very qualities were stripped from the civilizations that birthed them. Diverse Native cultures were reimagined as a patriarchal monoculture, iconically represented by the Plains Indian Chief, while female diplomats and political activists were reinterpreted as sexualized Indian Princesses, or silenced as “squaw” drudges. Native democracy itself was destroyed by a system of wardship, that subordinated its people to a Euro-American Bureau of Indian Affairs which Kellogg slammed as a “school for sycophants.”

Chief Andy's Boys' Club — Chief Andy’s Boys’ Club

“If I did not believe enough of you remain staunch to our ancestral standards of truth, to stand the ugly facts that concern us now, I should not speak.” – Laura Kellogg

The most remarkable feature of Ron E. Scott’s Canadian drama Blackstone, apart from its blistering probing of Kellogg’s “ugly facts” of demoralization, is how closely it links gendered oppressions with other exploitations. Bad government is represented by the chuckling boys’ club of Band Chief Andy Fraser, who hold meetings at the Roxy Rolla strip club, joke about screwing each other’s wives, and dismiss female opponents with gendered slurs like “cow” and “bitch.” The takeover by Leona Stoney and Victor Merasty therefore represents not only a return to idealism, but to gender-balanced leadership. Blackstone explores the toxic legacy of abuse within Canada’s residential schools, in which Irish religious orders played a major role, replicating our own traumatic legacy of institutional abuse and even perpetuating linguicide and colonial stigma, despite their demoralizing impact in Ireland. “Falling under the spell” of priests in his residential school shaped Tom Fraser’s bitter resentments and resistance to taking responsibility, which he has passed on to his son, Chief Andy (who, my God, is such a better portrait of Charlie Haughey than the recent Irish biopic. Period end). Blackstone also acknowledges the crushing impact of mainstream Canada’s indifference to the “fucking waste of time” of “this Indian bullshit,” but suggests that renewal must ultimately come from within. Its villains have internalized the colonizer’s gaze to the point that they reflexively worry “this looks bad” rather than acknowledging and tackling problems, perhaps anticipating criticism of the show’s own negative portrayals.

Just as the exaggerated domestic dramas of soap operas and telenovelas offer their mainly female audiences an important forum for processing their own frustrations, so the condensed and intensified social problems of Blackstone‘s fictional reserve are not simply a negative distortion of reality, but a basis for developing discussion and self-advocacy. The series’ opening sets the tone: over confrontational images of teen drug-taking, an elder tells a creation story, evoking nostalgia for the “real Indian.” But the elder, Cecil Delaronde (Gordon Tootoosis), challenges the disconnect between theory and practice: “if you look around you, culture is on display every day. Family violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, incest, suicide, corruption… that’s our culture now.” The show’s English title grows out of black roots in Cree, embodying both continuity and linguicide. Connecting political sovereignty, mental sovereignty and bodily sovereignty, Blackstone centers women in its hopes for renewal. Stoney women are the community’s bedrock.

Chief Leona Stoney

“More schooling than usually falls to the lot of an Indian woman and more contact with Caucasian artificiality and insincerity have graduated me into what might be called a polite Indian, and the process, I sometimes think, has taken a lot out of me” – Laura Kellogg

Leona Stoney is the daughter of a deceased chief. After sobering up from youthful addictions, her father entrusted the nation’s treaty pipe to her, representing her duty to lead. Leona lives off-reserve and works in addiction counseling with urban kids that her white boyfriend, Chris, charmingly calls: “kids who are ready. Ones who’ve escaped Blackstone.” Chris voices the defeatism that Leona must confront inside herself. Like historical allotment schemes, Chris associates redemption with assimilation into the white mainstream and “escape” from an irredeemable culture. As Chief Andy’s wife, Debbie, snarks to Chris, “it’s not easy being a chief’s wife, is it?” the show implies that his patriarchal pride is as threatened by Leona’s leadership as his Euro-American culture. In herself, Leona embodies the recovery narrative that the reserve needs: she has taken responsibility for her actions, she has integrated respect for traditional culture with adaptable openness to modernity, and she has cultivated compassion.

Her off-reserve status and white boyfriend are repeatedly used to question her right to lead, but Cecil Delaronde, representing the community’s conscience, affirms “we do need someone like you. A healer, someone who’s been elsewhere.” Leona’s fictional chiefdom recalls Wilma Mankiller’s legacy (see The Cherokee Word For Water), though Leona is overwhelmed by a nightmare reserve combining issues from across Canada. Her status as an educated activist for territorial sovereignty, with one foot off the reserve, also echoes the relentless activism of Laura Kellogg, who once sarcastically described herself as “a product of almost every institution on the outside except the insane asylum and Tammany Hall.” Leona applies an addiction recovery narrative to self-government: “we can’t keep blaming Ottawa for all our problems, it’s a flawed system we have to navigate.” Faced with a revelation of child abuse, however, her defensive reaction is tragically typical: “I’ve known that man since we were kids,” before growing into a real ally for justice (sexual violence is a major theme, handled with refreshing emphasis on victim/survivor impact, though Scott’s filming of the strippers is predictably male-gazey). Leona’s struggle to keep faith with the reserve is embodied in her painfully personal struggle with her elder sister, Gail.

Gail Stoney

“If the American Nation… charges to the Indian all the demoralization it has brought upon him as his inheritance, it has heaped upon him not only plunder and outrage but the stigma of inferiority.” – Laura Kellogg

Gail Stoney is a chronic alcoholic. Where Leona embodies the reserve’s recovery narrative, Gail is Blackstone: “it’s where I belong.” Gail is sharply intelligent, sarcastically cynical, fundamentally generous and warm-hearted, with a resilient will to live, but she is also a selfish addict who combines paranoia with deeply internalized negative self-image. Michelle Thrush’s raw performance adds layers with every episode, growing into the heart of the show (plus, I would watch Michelle Thrush read a laundry list). As Leona despairs of turning the reserve around, Cecil asks, “in your counseling experience, does an addict make a turnaround overnight?” By embodying the renewal of the reserve in the personal journey of an addict, Blackstone illustrates that the perseverance to withstand setbacks, and the fortitude to resist instant gratification, are key to the entire community’s recovery. It is Cecil who most empathizes with Gail’s solitary struggle for sovereignty over herself: “please do not self-destruct… if you look really deep inside, you will find that you have your father’s strength and determination. I know it,” implying that all of her father’s qualities as chief are equally needed in this personal struggle. Whenever Chief Leona approaches Gail with assumed superiority, she is resented and rejected. Conscious of her public image, she tries to censor Gail’s problems: “everybody is watching me right now, I need you to make an effort,” which only drives Gail to give up on herself: “I quit. Save you the embarrassment.”

In moments like this, Leona’s silencing and dismissive attitude to Gail almost echoes Chief Andy’s treatment of the entire reserve. Leona also struggles to take her own advice and forgive her alcoholic mother. Complexities like this elevate Blackstone above a simplistic battle between good and evil. The enemy is within, and right next door. Leona is urged to neglect Gail by sympathetic characters, because she has “bigger problems”. Yet, if a community is a collection of individuals, what problem can be bigger than any individual’s deepest crisis? As Leona is praised for her counseling skills, she says, “there’s a lot of need for it here. Our previous chief didn’t see it as a priority,” before the show cuts to Gail’s secret drinking, that Leona herself cannot see as a priority. As Gail collapses in a ditch, the song “I Won’t Be There For You” plays. Saving Gail requires nothing but the deepest love and solidarity, to believe that Gail is capable of saving herself. Gail demands that onlookers face her pain and loss, leaving the noose which hung her daughter, Natalie, to confront Andy “every time he drives by in his fancy truck.” As Leona counsels, over a montage that includes Gail’s hospitalization and Andy’s painful relationship to his father, “what we’re trying to do here is to locate that point of brokenness. Start to find a connection to ourselves again. So we can start to be who we were truly meant to be.” Keeping faith and believing in Gail’s potential is an emotionally bruising challenge, but it is the heart of the show’s opening season.

Natalie Stoney

“They don’t know us; they don’t know what it means to be killed alive.” – Laura Kellogg

Natalie Stoney haunts Blackstone, as Laura Palmer haunts Twin Peaks. For her mother, Natalie represents the guilt of Gail’s neglect, as well as her own possible doom. Natalie’s ghost becomes the taunting voice of Gail’s negative self-image, as Tom Fraser will be for his son Andy, or as boyfriend Chris voices Leona’s urge to abandon Blackstone. For Leona herself, Natalie’s suicide is her catalyst to submit to the duty of leadership. Leona fights to challenge the social narrative that victims like Natalie are inevitably doomed: “they are not ghosts. They are children.” As a ghost, Natalie makes the trope of the “vanishing Indian” into a visible presence to be resisted. As played by Roseanne Supernault, star of Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes For Young Ghouls, Natalie is as smart, fundamentally sweet and sarcastic as her mother. Though rape was the catalyst for Natalie’s suicide, her filmed interview with Victor, before the rape, points to deeper issues. As Victor approaches, a drugged-out Natalie slurs “you wanna fuck me too?” already understanding sexual exploitation as her only value, or her inevitable treatment. When asked about her dreams for the future, she mumbles “what future?” Her rape was an unjustifiable assault on her bodily sovereignty, but her suicide is a choice to surrender that sovereignty, inspired by this internalized sense of futurelessness. Believing that any group is inevitably doomed, whether that belief is triumphalist or pitying, is an act of psychological violence against them. Chief Andy may try to appropriate Natalie’s silenced body, to point the finger at “victimization by an apathetic, indifferent administration in Ottawa” in his neverending search for funds, but on Blackstone, Natalie will speak for herself.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Osr4GmPsmQ”]

Acing the Bechdel, confronting rape apologism, modeling female leadership… in just the trailer

Blackstone is available to watch on hulu

Brigit McCone is mad that hulu is unavailable in Ireland and hopes Blackstone gets a distribution deal with TG4. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and telling people to check out the carvings of Susan Point.

Rape Revenge Fantasies: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for Rape Revenge Fantasies Theme Week here.

Revenge Is a Dish Best Served…Not at All? by Angelina Rodriguez

Tarantino’s Kill Bill narrative requires The Bride to murder her rapist and to defend herself with some of the masculine characteristics that are used as institutionalized power to oppress women, such as physical strength and aggression. The film insists that she seek revenge, instead of demanding that men simply do not rape. This is barely better than teaching rape avoidance. It dictates that women must assimilate to a male culture of violence in order to have autonomy over their own bodies.

Irreversible: Deconstructing Rape Revenge by Max Thornton

Irreversible deconstructs the ethically dubious pleasures of the rape revenge genre through its structure as well as its plot. Its reverse chronology inverts the formula of rape-then-revenge, thereby robbing the viewer of any sense, however questionable, of justice done, and subverting the whole economy of violence.

“I’ll Make You Feel Like You’ve Never Felt Before”: Jennifer’s Power in I Spit on Your Grave Sophie Besl

No movies ever had to justify a cowboy going on a rogue revenge kick after his log cabin was burned to the ground or his family was killed; certain sufferings of injury, murder of loved ones, robbery, etc., have been accepted throughout cinematic history to merit revenge at all costs. I Spit on Your Grave was a large part of a relatively new phenomenon, possibly born out of the feminist movement, to add rape—based on the woman’s experience of rape, whether validated by law or not—to that list of worthy harms, which is an important statement in our rape culture.

When Biopics Go Awry: Bandit Queen As Rape Revenge by Colleen Lutz Clemens

When considering female agents of violence in a film, there is a troublesome tendency that plays to the audience’s anxiety about a women disrupting the essentialist notion that women are naturally gentle and nurturing: the tendency to have the woman acting in response to sexual violence, that only after a woman is overpowered and assaulted can she find a place of violence in her. Once the naturalness of a woman is disrupted by an outside force—a (usually male) perpetrator—she is no longer required to be viewed as “womanly.”

The Fractured Rape/Revenge Fantasies of Julie Taymor’s Titus by Rebecca Willoughby

Julie Taymor’s contemporary approach to creating a film of Titus Andronicus then, has to address a variety of factors: 1) she has set up for herself the challenge of filming a Shakespeare play that has been called both an “early masterpiece” and an “Elizabethan pot-boiler”; 2) she’s a female director approaching a play that has, at its center, a ritual killing, a rape, and revenge cannibalism; and 3) she’s creating this piece of art during a historical moment during which entertainment media is rife with violence and there much alleged desensitization, as well as within a culture full of complex and problematic attitudes about rape.

Women As Perpetrators of Violence in Freeway by Ren Jender

In films, as in life, women aren’t supposed to be violent. Women make up the majority of violent crime victims (domestic violence, assault, rape, and murder) but they rarely retaliate in kind. Even in the relatively rare film where a woman seriously injures or kills a rapist, like Thelma and Louise she does so with lots of tears and anguish–in that film both from the woman pulling the trigger and the one who the man attempted to rape. The unwritten rule in movies seems to be that in order to justify a woman killing or even assaulting someone, we need to see her or some other woman suffer, a lot, beforehand. Contrast that rule with the male heroes of action films who leave dozens of corpses in their wake, and not one of the dead, usually, has raped or otherwise tortured the hero beforehand–though the hero may be avenging some great wrong the dead guy (or guys) did to his wife or daughter.

Cowboy Justice: Rape Revenge in Mainstream Cinema and TV by Morgan Faust

So maybe what had looked like a trend toward marginalizing rape survivors was actually a move toward bringing them into the fold of the American action hero? This is a move that discloses a terrible truth about the handling of rape cases in our legal system, but can be viewed as a genuine attempt to find a way to make the cowboy narrative, and the catharsis that comes with it, available and relevant to survivors of rape.

What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About Rape Culture by Leigh Kolb

In Titus Andronicus, Lavinia is brutally raped and disfigured (including having her tongue cut out so she couldn’t speak). This nod to Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses echoes the themes of the brutality of rape and the need for revenge. The women needed to name their rapists and share their stories (Lavinia writes in the sand; Philomela weaves a tapestry that tells her story). The women have as much power as they can in the confines of their society, and we the audience are meant to want justice and revenge.

On Milk-Bones, Toothed Vaginas, and Adolescence: Teeth as a Cautionary Tale by Colleen Lutz Clemens

But when Dawn learns that Ryan has bedded her as part of a bet while he is still inside of her, Dawn’s evolutionary adaptation intercedes and Ryan is punished for his use and abuse of Dawn. So now two trusted boyfriends and a doctor have initiated Dawn into the world of oppressive sex and violence, and all three times her vagina—the thing that has left her most vulnerable—has acted as a protector.

The “Rape Turns Ladies Into Superheroes!” Trope by Melissa McEwan

More than being shitty to watch, it just pissed me off to 10 because I hate with the fiery passion of 10,000 suns the ubiquitous trope that surviving sexual violence (or attempted sexual violence) turns women into superheroes.

Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema by Ariel Smith

By forcing the subconscious fears of audiences to the surface, horror cinema evokes reactions psychologically and physically–that is its power. This power can serve and support uncensored Indigenous expression by allowing Indigenous filmmakers the opportunity to unleash dark, unsanitized allegorical representations of the abhorrent, repugnant, violent abomination that is colonization.

Rape, Lies, and Gossip on Gossip Girl by Scarlett Harris

Her banishment by Blair when she finds out what transpired between Jenny and her on-again, off-again lover is typical of the punish-the-woman mentality Gossip Girl is so fond of. Instead of shaming her partner for taking advantage of a teenage girl, Blair blames Jenny for ruining her proposal. And when Jenny returns the following season to help Chuck take down Blair (keep up, people!), she should really be seeking revenge on her rapist, wouldn’t you say?

Girl Gang Fights Rape Culture in Firefox by Elizabeth Kiy

Though very different, the two films based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, Foxfire: Confessions of A Girl Gang, have a shared message: that rape culture is pervasive. and the experiences of girls and women within it are sadly, universal. In both films, one set in the 90s, the other in the 50s, teenage girls inhabit dangerous territory, full of sexual assaults and near misses, all ignored by the authorities around them. Their experiences aren’t considered unusual or justified within their respective narratives, instead, they point out that women are given a lot of reasons to feel unsafe and afraid in our society. At the very least, we’ve all been told not to walk home at night or frightened by a man following too close on our heels.

Agency and Gendered Violence in Thelma and Louise by Jenny Lapekas

These characters challenge our gendered assumptions about sex, trauma, and vengeance, which can make audiences uncomfortable. I was likely too young when I first watched Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991). However, I remember the surge of adrenaline I felt when Louise shot and killed Thelma’s rapist, how incredibly good it felt to idolize these convict women who had had enough with their monotonous lives, at an age when I couldn’t possibly comprehend patriarchal oppression, the comforts of solidarity and sisterhood, or the concept of escapism utilized not necessarily to run away but rather to find your wildest, most genuine self.

Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema

This guest post by Ariel Smith appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby employes aesthetic strategies and themes from horror cinema in order to push back against stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples and critique contemporary neo-colonial systems. Barnaby has been known to recall conventions from both body horror and dystopian science fiction in order to present dark, disturbing narratives in which Mi’gmaq characters navigate through gruesome representations of abjection and assimilation. In his first feature film, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), we see Barnaby drawing from another sub-genre of horror cinema, that of the rape revenge film.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is set against the backdrop of Canada’s Indian Residential School System.

For those who don’t know, from 1884 to 1948, it was compulsory for Indigenous children under 16 years of age living in what is now known as Canada to attend colonial government-funded, church-run day and boarding schools. Children were forcibly removed from their families by Indian agents, and families were threatened with fines or prison if they failed to send their children. Children as young as 5 could be kept away from their parents for months or years at a time, were prohibited from speaking their language, and were issued severe corporal punishment for any expression of non-Christian cultural, social or spiritual practice. The Indian Residential School System’s express and specific, methodical intention was to “Kill the Indian in the child” and resulted in cultural genocide that Indigenous nations are only now beginning to heal from. Many children experienced heinous sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, as well as being subjected to publicly documented sterilization efforts and starvation experiments. The last residential school closed in Canada in 1996 and this colonial system has resulted in multiple, consecutive generations with both stolen childhoods and parenthoods. Even Indigenous children who did not attend residential school are affected by inter-generational trauma, as their parents and/or grandparents most likely attended.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls takes place on a Mi’gma reserve in the late 1970s. The lead protagonist, 15-year-old Alia, makes her living dealing pot. One of her most pressing expenses is paying off the corrupt and psychotic Indian agent, Popper, in order for herself, and other kids from her community to not be taken away to the residential school, where they will undoubtedly be physically and sexually abused. Alia winds up being double crossed and taken against her will to the school, but she soon breaks out and on Halloween night, together with a posse of other kids from the rez, enacts violent, bloody, revenge against the school’s abusive staff.

The sub-genre of rape revenge is often categorized under an umbrella of exploitation cinema, famous for its use of shock value and extreme scenarios. However, Indigenous filmmakers’ contributions to the rape revenge canon do not require exaggeration. We do not need to think up imagined incidents of vicious macabre torture. The Marquis Du Sade has nothing on Canada’s residential schools. The horror, the terror–it’s all around us, it is the foundation that the colonial states are built upon. We walk in it every day, and prove our resilience through continued survival.

Another example of rape revenge themes within Indigenous cinema can be found in Niitsítapi/Sami filmmaker Elle-Maija Tailfeathers’ short film, A Red Girl’s Reasoning.

Tailfeathers presents us with a narrative in which an Indigenous woman, who is raped, is failed by the justice system and becomes a vigilantle, seeking and delivering violent revenge against her own and other women’s rapists.

As with Barnaby’s work, it is impossible for A Red Girl’s Reasoning to be read outside of a larger overarching social context, which in this case it is the ongoing epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous woman and girls. There are over 800 cases of missing and murdered woman and girls in Canada which have been documented so far. Amnesty International Canada states that “According to Statistics Canada the national homicide rate for Indigenous women is at least seven times higher than for non-Indigenous women…There are also a greatly disproportionate number of Indigenous women and girls among long-term missing persons cases. In Saskatchewan, Indigenous women make up only 6 per cent of the population of the province, but 60 per cent of its missing women are Indigenous.”

Media coverage and police support is often far less for missing or murdered Indigenous women than in the case of a white woman. Sexualized violence has been used as a tool of colonial conquest since contact and the epidemic of stolen sisters is a reflection of how Indigenous woman continue to be devalued and dehumanized by white settler society.

The vengeance scenarios portrayed in both Rhymes for Young Ghouls and A Red Girl’s Reasoning resonate deeply with Indigenous audiences as they tap into our collective pain and anger. These films serve to disrupt the dominant visual culture, which excludes Indigenous perspectives and representation and has all but erased Indigenous peoples from the imagination of settler consciousness. Indigenous filmmakers provide visual allegory for what feminist and author bell hooks has called the “killing rage,” which is described by Amazon.com as “The fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism… and the finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength, and a catalyst for productive change”

Approaching and calling attention to the full depth of monstrosity that is colonial transgression is what makes Indigenous cinema, in general, such a powerful tool of resistance and resurgence. Indigenous cinema is bigger than the individual movies we make. Regardless of content or form, Native filmmakers have not yet been afforded the luxury to create work that is not automatically placed under a socio-political lens. As Indigenous peoples living in postcolonial/neo-colonial times, our presence–our very existence–is in itself a political statement, and our artistic expression is in itself a beautiful declaration of sovereignty, and self-determination.

Ariel also works in Indigenous media arts advocacy and administration and is currently the director of National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC).